Modern Prejudice

It's quite interesting how we have different prejudices for different people, doing the same thing, in modern society.

Case in point, on Sunday whilst Claire and I were driving up to Oxford, we were very quickly approached and passed by a little red VW Polo which proceeded to race off ahead of us. It soon encountered a relatively slow moving truck. As the road was a single carriage way and very windy, there was no way the little Polo could pass the truck, so instead it tailgated the truck for several miles.

When the little Polo shot passed us, I noticed there was a little old dear driving it and I commented to Claire: "Now that's what I like to see, an old dear who knows her time is limited so has chosen to do things in a hurry."

When we saw the little Polo tailgating the truck, Claire and I both started egging the old dear on, encouraging her to pressure the truck to speed up or move over, or take a risky move herself and overtake him - her time is limited after all.

And then the penny dropped: our attitudes were being heavily influenced by the age and, to a lesser degree, sex of the driver, though not my driving - I still kept my distance. Had that old dear actually been a youngster, particularly a young man, we would have called him every arse under the sun for his stupid, dangerous and reckless driving, but here we have an old dear and we're somehow accepting and even encouraging her dangerous driving.

We soon turned to each other and corrected ourselves and in a joking manner told off the old dear for her dangerous driving.